MATLAB: Problem existing with Parrot minidrone in trying to fly

bluetoothbluetooth connectionminidroneparrotparrot minidroneparrot minidronessimulink

Hello, I'm working on research and development at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.I have done all I needed to do to connect the Mambo to the computer via bluetooth correctly (I can ping to 192.168.3.1 and I get answer). Also, simulink allows me to deploy the hardware into the Parrot minidrone, but when I try to spin the motors, I get the error "Connection with Parrot mini-drone at 192.168.3.5 failed. Ensure that the parrot mini-drone is powered on and connected to the computer via bluetooth" I also modeled the configuration parameters correctly. If anyone can help me please, I would really appreciate it.

Best Answer

Hello, Mario

The IP address 192.168.3.5 is from Parrot Rolling Spider and not for the Parrot Mambo (192.168.3.1), which means that in somewhere on MATLAB/Simulink it is configured to deploy the software for the Rolling Spider hardware. I did not have this problem performing the following steps:

1. On the MATLAB tab ¨Project Shortcuts¨ click on ¨Set Mambo Model¨and then click on ¨Set PARROT Target¨. This will make sure that the software is meant to be deployed to the Mambo Model and define it as the target;

2. On Simulink, open ¨Model Configuration Parameters¨, select ¨Hardware Implementation Section¨ and verify if ¨PARROT Mambo¨ is the selected hardware board. There you can even see the IP address designated for the PARROT Minidrones (¨Hardware board settings¨->¨Target hardware resources¨->¨External mode¨).

You can confirm the selected model in MATLAB by typing ¨model¨ in the command window. If the problem persists, send a print of the code generation diagnostics and of the interface as well.

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MATLAB: Parrot Minidrone Firmware Update Java Error

It appears that the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) which happens when clicking in the 'write' button is failing. There might be two reasons for this:

1. The firewall settings in your Windows 10 PC is blocking FTP.

2. Your drone, has no memory left in /data/edu folder and hence the FTP transfer is throwing an error.

To know whether issue 1 is the cause, you can connect the drone to your PC and after the LEDs have stabilized to RED and GREEN, type the command in MATLAB:

f = ftp('192.168.2.1')

If this command does not throw an error, then issue 2 is the root cause for the failure, in which case please follow these steps:

1. Connect the drone to PC and wait for the LEDs to stabilize to RED and GREEN.

2. Open command prompt on Windows

3. Execute the commands below in the command prompt

telnet 192.168.2.1
cd /data/edu
rm -r *

NOTE: you may have to enable the telnet command by typing in a windows command prompt:

dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:TelnetClient

4. Disconnect and reboot the drone.

5. Connect the drone back to PC and wait for the LEDs to stabilize to RED and GREEN.

6. Open MATLAB and execute the below commands in MATLAB command window (ensure that the drone is still connected to PC):

>> cd( matlabshared.supportpkg.getSupportPackageRoot)
>> cd toolbox\target\supportpackages\parrot\lib\EDUfirmwareFILES
>> f = ftp('192.168.2.1')
>> mput(f,'SpiderFlight.sh')

If all of the above commands are successful, you can give a try once more to the setup screens.

If there is still a failure, there might be some data in /tmp folder of the drone. To clean the drone memory you can revert the firmware of the drone to the parrot shipped firmware for rolling spider as mentioned below:

https://community.parrot.com/t5/Rolling-Spider-Knowledge-Base/Software-Update-Process/ta-p/122999

The firmware update will clear any irrelevant data in the drone memory.

After the firmware is reverted, you can try the setup screens again.

MATLAB: Doesn’t the Hardware Setup detect the PARROT Rolling Spider on Windows

This issue occurs on some Windows 10 installations. There are two possible reasons for this issue:

1. The timeout period (typically 60 seconds) might have expired for the Rolling Spider minidrone and hence it would get disconnected from the PC automatically. In this case, you should perform the following steps:

a. Connect the drone back to the host PC.

b. Wait for the LEDs to stabilize to one GREEN and one RED and then search for the minidrone in the setup application. You need to ensure that a drive named ‘Parrot_RS’ is appearing in their drive list.

2. If you can see a drive, but the drone is still not being detected by the setup, it indicates that the MATLAB USB enumerator APIs are returning NULL values. This might be due to the missing .NET application in the Windows 10 installation. To resolve this issue, please perform the following steps:

a. Navigate to support package root by executing the following commands in the MATLAB command window:

cd(matlabshared.supportpkg.getSupportPackageRoot);
cd toolbox\target\supportpackages\parrot\+codertarget\+parrot\+setup;

b. Replace the "selectDroneFromList.m" and "flashDrone.m" files with the attached files.

c. Delete the "selectDroneFromList.p" and "flashDrone.p" files.

d. Execute the following commands in the MATLAB command window:

clear classses; clear pcode; rehash toolboxcache;

Best Answer

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MATLAB: Parrot Minidrone Firmware Update Java Error

MATLAB: Doesn’t the Hardware Setup detect the PARROT Rolling Spider on Windows

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